In a conventional bearing mechanism, a pinion shaft is rotatably supported by a single ball bearing in the front wall of the body of a spinning reel.
In another conventional bearing mechanism, a pinion shaft (a) is supported by the front wall (b') of the body (b) of a spinning reel and a projecting portion in the reel body (b) as shown in FIG. 3.
The former conventional bearing mechanism has a problem that resistance to the fishline winding action of a handle becomes very high when heavy loads act on the fishline.
In the latter conventional bearing mechanism, the front portion of the pinion shaft (a) is supported by a ball bearing (d), but the rear portion of the pinion shaft cannot be supported by another ball bearing because of the spatial interference of a master gear (e) with the ball bearing and is therefore supported by a bearing member (f) made of metal, synthetic resin. For that reason, the bearing mechanism has a problem that when heavy loads act on the fishline at the time of winding thereof, the resistance to the pinion shaft (a) is heavily increased making it necessary to augment the fishline winding torque of the handle